Hum Do Hamare Do Movie Review: Hum do hamare don’t?

Hum Do Hamare Do
ON: Hotstar+ Disney
Dir: Abhishek Jain
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Kriti Sanon
Rating: 1.5/5

There is a line in this film spoken by the proverbial father of the bride, in this case, the uncle, looking for a suitable family for his niece to marry into.
For background check, he (Manu Rishi) says, "Ghar khareedne se pehle, do baar dekhna chahiye: Ek bar din mein, doosri baar raat mein. Din ko ghar samajh mein aata hai, raat ko mohalla! (Must visit a home that you wanna buy twice - once during the day, second time at night. The former gives you a sense of the house; the latter, the neighbourhood)."

It's a perfectly sounding line, actually. Except when you think about it, as the girl here (Kriti Sanon) does. Without missing a beat, she asks, "Matlab? (What does that mean?)"

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Can say the same for the rest of this film that, on the face of it, looks aptly designed as a feel-goodish rom-com (God knows my favourite genre) - with the good-looking hero, heroine, locking eyes over several meet-cute moments, hitting it off eventually with a lilting score and the screen in slo-mo (inevitably with the words ‘ishq' and ‘kamli' in the lyrics).

There is a modern, urbane touch still, with the guy (Rajkummar Rao) in hoodie and expensive sneakers, running a tech start-up, while the girl video-blogs for a living. That they've been on a few dates, it's inevitable that they must get married; of course. Which effectively means the families must meet, and settle that deal first.

Also Read: Paresh Rawal: There is stability and depth to such romances

Only that the boy has no family. He's an orphan, who once worked as a chaiwalla at a dhaba. How he grew from there, into a suave, sorted techie, founding a VR firm, is a trivial matter that the screenwriters don't bother examining. In line with the recent, equally bumbling, Vikrant Massey starrer 14 Phere (2021) - what's of primary importance in this picture is that the leading man pick two people to pose as his parents.

That's Paresh Rawal, and Ratna Pathak Shah, who's delightfully expressive; no matter where you place her. Now these two characters share a past of their own, which you couldn't care a flying fig for, since you can barely bother with whatever is happening in the present.

I watched this picture on the big screen at a preview show, although it has dropped directly on an OTT platform. The dark hall, community experience from my front seat gave it the veneer of a movie going all over the place, but essentially trying too hard to somehow fit into a mainstream '90s DDLJ type Bollywood space - best friend (Akarsh Khurana), for whom the hero's a full-time job; heroine's younger sister, as the voice of reason; a bunch of assorted real/fake rishtedaars, papa-mummies, who must be raazi, before the hero-heroine meet the pandit/qazi. You get the drift.

Only that I'm still trying to figure the irreversibly earth-shattering, backbreaking point of a couple of hours of this metropolitan city-based shaadi shindig, that's more rom than com. Love is suitably expressed, warmly exchanged. Both boy and girl appear equally well off.

Class is not the issue. Neither is religion/caste, because that'd be out of such a movie's syllabus. Yes, the boy has no parents, that he's spent all this while running around in circles/pheras for. But the girl is an orphan as well. So then: "Matlab? (What do you mean?)" Think the fine actors in this film should've asked that question first, if not more often.

Also Read: Rajkummar Rao: Audience is unforgiving today, you have to constantly excite them